


Duat

by Evandar



Series: 100fandoms Challenge [5]
Category: The Pyramid (2014)
Genre: Canonical Abuse of Ancient Egyptian Myth, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:33:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24095143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evandar/pseuds/Evandar
Summary: The last moments of Michael Zahir's life.
Relationships: Michael Zahir/Nora Holden
Series: 100fandoms Challenge [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1432576
Kudos: 5





	Duat

**Author's Note:**

> This movie is my terrible guilty pleasure, and I love to hate it in all its stupidity. So that's why, after my latest comfort-rewatch, I wrote this for the 100Fandoms Challenge prompt 'fear.'
> 
> The title of the fic is one of the Ancient Egyptian words for 'underworld' or 'afterlife.'

He can’t – he can’t _think_ through the pain. Can barely talk. Can’t _move_ with his leg trapped under a block of sandstone larger than his body. Oh, Allah, his _leg_. He can’t – he can’t – he –

He watches them try to get out. He watches the journalist try to climb a shaft only to fall out with scratches high on her cheek. Nora fusses over the wound with a towel and antiseptic, and it’s uncharitable of him to look for the relief in her face that _this_ is an injury she can do something about. The drugs are kicking in, making his head heavy and his vision swim; it might be blood loss, instead, but he doesn’t want to think about the hot-sticky-wetness he can feel soaking into his khakis. Even so, he knows it’s not a dog that attacked them, that attacked Shorty. He – hah – he knows scratches like that. His people used to worship cats when tombs like this were being built. They were guardians of the house and of the dead, and those are definitely _cat_ scratches on Sunni’s cheek. The smell that the cameraman – Fitzie – has been bitching about the whole time…that’s cat shit. Fetid and rotten and fucking _toxic_. It’s like the litter box in his sister’s house, but worse. So much worse. A hundred thousand times worse. 

He can’t talk, really. His tongue is a useless, heavy thing in his mouth. A deadened lump. And fuck, he doesn’t think – he can’t remember English. What’s English for “cat”? What’s English for “stop fucking panicking”?

What’s English for “don’t go deeper into the buried _fucking_ pyramid, you idiot fucking Americans”? He – oh, Allah – he hates them. They’re stupid and panicking and _leaving him_. And he knows he’s going to die. He knows. He’s known ever since the size of the rock pinning him registered through the pain. He _knows_ , but that doesn’t mean he want to. It doesn’t mean he wants to die alone, in the dark, in a giant fucking Old Kingdom litter box.

He tries, Allah, he tries to tell them. He tries to speak, to do anything except moan in pain as they start to take down he barricades, and – 

And why can’t they see that something’s wrong? The Ancients sealed their tombs, yes, but not like _that_. They didn’t barricade them closed from the outside. They carved warnings, but…not like these. Not these. _Nothing_ is right, but none of them can see it: they’re too scared, too wired, too – 

The hole they open into the tunnel beyond is like nothing he’s seen. Even in his corner, eyes blurring from tears and pain and drugs, he can still see the shadows _stretch_. A “waiting darkness” his grandfather would have called it, and the thought brings the agony of failure: his American education won’t bring him the great things his grandfather hoped for.

He’s shaking. He’s – he’s dimly aware that he’s going into shock. When she comes to him, Nora’s hand in his hair feels unnaturally warm, and the smile she gives him doesn’t reach her eyes. She places the lantern between them – the only one they brought; stupid, so _stupid_ unreal in his grasp. It hasn’t warmed since they took it from the armoury, even though Nora used it to break into the next passage. The last thing he wants is to touch it, but she closes his fingers around it and _holds them there_ , pressing briefly in a way that isn’t as reassuring as she probably hoped for.

“You won’t need the hatchet,” she tells him, “but just in case…”

He wants to scream. He can’t. He can barely _breathe_

Her hand is shaking as she lifts it to his face. She strokes along his jaw and presses a last kiss to his lips. She tastes of the desert: of salt-sweat and sand, and of tears. She _knows_. She knows he’s going to die, and she’s leaving him anyway.

“I’m going to go get you help, okay?” she promises. “I’m going to come back for you.”

It’s a _lie_. She’s going the wrong way: going deeper into a waiting darkness, deeper underground. There is no help down there. She’s going the wrong way, and even if she does come back, there won’t be anything to come back _to_.

But Nora hates to feel like she isn’t doing something, and asking her to wait with him as he dies is a cruelty he can’t get his tongue to form. He lets her go. Watches her vanish with her father, with Sunni on their tail and Fitzie with his camera ready. He watches them all leave him, watches as they don’t look back.

He tries, when they’re gone, to lift the axe. He fails. It slips out of his trembling hands to clatter onto the floor. He doesn’t try again. He waits instead, thinking about Shorty, about NASA, and how he really should have lived with the result of a lawsuit for destroying their robot. He thinks about Nora and the pale gold of her hair and how she didn’t look back. He thinks about the light of the lantern, and the blood pooling around him, and the gathering darkness at the entrance to the tunnel and the corners of his vision.

He thinks – 

He thinks –

He thinks he would have preferred it if she hadn’t left the lantern, after all. If she’d abandoned him in the darkness instead of in its pool of pale light. At least then he wouldn’t have had to see it reflecting back at him, green and glowing, as the cats come to guard the dead from the living once more. 

He finds his tongue. Forces it to work as they slink towards him, growling and snarling and spitting. He finally screams as they lunge.

“Help me. Help me! _Help me!_ ”


End file.
